NRG DASHBOARD

Tempers Flare As Cash Starved Venezuela Starts To Ration Petrol At The Pumps

(AFP, 5.Jun.2019
) — Maria Lopez complains about gasoline rationing that Venezuela — home to
the world’s largest oil reserves — has started introducing in some areas to
tackle extreme fuel shortages.

“It’s a joke,” Lopez said.

But for ordinary Venezuelans, it is a cruel joke
without a punchline — a driver recently died of a heart attack after waiting
in line for days to fill his tank.

Since Monday, drivers in the western state of
Lara can buy only 30 liters (eight gallons) of fuel a week, while a rationing
system based on vehicles’ license plates has been introduced in Bolivar state
in the south and Monagas in the west.

Fuel shortages have long been chronic in the
smuggling-prone states close to the border with Colombia. But the situation
worsened in recent weeks as the United States slapped more economic sanctions
on Venezuela and its state-run petrol company PDVSA.

Lopez had been waiting in line to fill her tank
for six hours in Lara’s capital Barquisimeto, but had to leave without getting
any fuel because she had to go search for medicine for her ailing brother, who
suffers from meningitis.

“It’s a joke!” she fumed again as she
left the gas station empty-handed, despite the fact that between
state-regulated gas prices, hyper-inflation and black-market dollar exchange
rates, a dollar could technically buy almost 600 million liters of fuel.

Even though President Nicolas Maduro said last
August that the rock-bottom fuel prices would go up, there has not been an
increase so far.

Ivan Herrera had also run out of luck: he had
been to three gas stations without managing to top up. According to industry
sources, 40 percent of the 104 gas stations in Barquisimeto — a city of a
million people — are shut.

“There shouldn’t be any rationing in a
country like ours, an oil nation,” said Ivan Herrera. “It’s just
backwardness.”

According to the Organization of Petroleum
Exporting Countries (OPEC), Venezuela’s oil output has dropped from 3.2 million
barrels per day a decade ago to 1.03 million barrels in April this year. Other
estimates put that output as low as 768,000 barrels per day.

Sanctions imposed by Washington in an effort to
force Maduro to step down have paralyzed gas deliveries from the United States,
which are vital for meeting Venezuela’s domestic demand, and have also hindered
the import of the thinners needed to dilute and refine Venezuela’s own heavy
crude.

– Confusion –

In the town of Puerto Ordaz, in the state of
Bolivar, Yackson Salas woke up in his car on Monday in a line at a gas station.

“I slept in the queue,” he told AFP,
complaining about the confusion that surrounds the new system: drivers are
supposed to fill their tanks according to their license plates, with
alternating days for tags ending in odd or even numbers.

“But lots of people join the line even on
days when it’s not their turn,” Salas said.

And despite the measures, the lines
“stretch for kilometers,” said John Velasquez, one of 300 or so
drivers waiting for his quota.

One of the waiting drivers tried to alter his
license plate number with a felt-tip pen, but was spotted and thrown out of the
line.

The head of PDVSA, Manuel Quevedo, said last
week that the government would guarantee supplies but the shortages persisted.
Maduro, for his part, blamed the shortfall on sabotage carried out against oil
tankers, but offered no details.

– Struggle –

Even in Merida, a western state where there is
no rationing yet, there are endless lines for gas.

Humberto Trejo, a 60-year-old haulage
contractor, died on Monday of a heart attack after having waited in line four
days for fuel, local officials said.

Local media reports said Trejo suffered a
cardiac arrest after becoming infuriated that some drivers were using dollars
and Colombian pesos to bribe the soldiers guarding the gas station to allow
them to jump the line that had formed.

In neighboring Tachira state, residents have
started smuggling in fuel across the border from Colombia, despite the
crossings being officially closed, triggering long lines at pumps in the
Colombian border town of Cucuta.

Until recently, the flow of smuggled fuel had
gone the other way, from Venezuela into Colombia, because state-subsidized fuel
was so cheap that smugglers could earn significant mark-ups in Colombia.